Traditionally, accountability has meant compliance with bureaucratic regulations issued by the State Education Department. These accountability principles take a different tack. They emphasize student achievement as their key component and seek to lodge authority and accountability as closely as possible to the school level.

A guarantee of adequate resources is a prerequisite for an effective accountability system: students, teachers and administrators cannot be held accountable for meeting high standards if they are not given the resources to do so. Stable funding must also be assured if districts and schools are to meet their students' learning needs. In addition, the legislature must provide local schools with the appropriate authority to carry out their responsibilities.

An effective accountability system balances the role of state officials with increased responsibility for student performance by those at the district and school levels. All those involved with student learning must have specific roles and responsibilities that mutually reinforce each other. Administrators, teachers, board members, parents, students and the community at large need to be empowered and seriously involved in a crusade for educational success. In other words, accountability must be everybody's business.

Public reports should take the form of statewide assessment data and district-level and school-level report cards. A variety of assessments – including portfolios, oral presentations, experiments and written work – should be used to gauge student performance, and all of these assessments must be reliable and validated. School- and district-level data should stress students' progress, rather than performance at one particular time. State and local officials should also collect data on the extent to which schools have the qualified teachers, professional development, class sizes, textbooks, equipment and up-to-date curricula they need to provide all their student the opportunity for a sound basic education.

In addition to making sure that schools have the resources they need, the state should work collaboratively with districts and local schools to make sure that each school has the professional capacity to provide the opportunity for a sound basic education to every student. The state should also, of course, monitor districts as necessary to guard against waste, fraud or gross inefficiency. Where districts or schools persistently fail to meet standards, the state should intervene to reorganize or close the school and/or to remove individuals who continue to fail to meet their responsibilities after sufficient professional support has been provided.